Dead of Winter

Chapter 72

Ebony stood looking down the corridor, listening to the hum of the pipes overhead. There was a sickly heat in the corridor from the pipes that ran overhead and served the hospital central heating system. She walked on to the next room: a treatment room. Shelves packed with dressings and tubes, syringes in packs. Ebony looked at the floor; it was the same linoleum as in the room upstairs in Blackdown Barn.

The last door at the end of the corridor opened up into someone’s world. This was a place where someone lived and slept, dreamed of being somewhere else, thought Ebony. She stepped into a world with posters on the world of faraway places — Greek Islands and Asian cities. A small kitchen area and microwave was in the far right corner. There was a bed at the other end of the room, a bathroom off to the right. There was a woman’s pair of pink fluffy slippers at the end of the bed. There were photos of puppies and kittens and, on top of the television in the corner, there was a framed photograph of a man; Ebony recognized that it was Martingale in his youth and in his arms was Nikki. Her face was almost the same as it was now. Ebony walked across to the bed and knelt to smell the pillow. It was stuffed with lavender flowers. Next to the bed was an orchid.